Michael Szonyi is a social historian of late imperial and modern China. He studies local society in southeast China using a combination of traditional textual sources and fieldwork. He is currently working on a manuscript on the social history of Ming military institutions.

His previous books include Practicing Kinship (2002) and Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line (2008).

Szonyi received his BA from the University of Toronto and his D.Phil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has also studied at National Taiwan University and Xiamen University. Prior to coming to Harvard in 2005, Prof. Szonyi taught at McGill University and University of Toronto.